Florida Stage unveils 1st Stage lineup

For its fifth annual 1st Stage New Works Festival, Florida Stage is shifting its staged reading extravaganza to a long weekend at its new home in West Palm Beach's Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.

Running Feb. 4-6, with a kickoff reception Feb. 3, this year's festival will feature readings of seven new plays -- some of which, as in the past, will get future full productions.

On this year's bill are Israel Horovitz's Beverley, a comic love triangle involving a woman and two men in their 70s; Deborah Zoe Laufer's Leveling Up, a play about video game addicts who just might have a future launching missiles; Kew Henry's Poet, about two muses assigned to Edgar Allan Poe; Carter W. Lewis' The Americans Across the Street, featuring a world-weary man whose greatest delight is ranting at his neighbors; Andrew Rosendorf's Brilliant Corners, about a divorced jazz lover whose family wants money; Christopher Demos-Brown's Captiva, a dark comedy about a family reunion upended by a hurricane; and John Herrera's Tiempo de amor, a play about a young woman torn between an older Spaniard and her controlling mother in 1920s Havana and Tampa.

In addition to the readings and opening party, a keynote address (past speakers include Marsha Norman, John Guare and Horovitz) will be part of the new play celebration.